Jefferson Davis Sandefer Christian Educator

Vintage Hardcover, Signed First Edition, 1940, Broadman Press, Nashville, 350 pages. Very Good, no DJ - as issued. Minor shelf/edge wear and dust soiling to tan buckram cloth boards with gilt outline of Texas and a gilt star showing the location of the University and a cowboy amid a bucking horse, both in blue in the center - corners sharp. Spine slightly faded. Full page letter to the previous owner and signed by the author on the back side of the half-title page. No other writing - all pages are clean and unmarked. This is a well done and illustrated biography of Jefferson Davis Sandefer, the sixth President of Hardin?Simmons University, who served in that position from 1909 to 1940. Lovingly and well written by his daughter-in-law, Inez Woodward Sandefer. Born, during Reconstuction and overcoming all the educational hazards of that time with the help and encouragement of a devoted Christian mother, he dedicated his life to Christ. He began his career as a teacher in a rural community and spent all his spare time in the promotion of Prohibition and the furtherance of educational causes. He then became President of John Tarelton College of Stephenville,TX in 1908. One year later, Sandefer was named President of Simmons College and served in that capacity for thirty-one years. As the president, Sandefer made it a point to know the students by name and to spend time visiting with them. There are 27 tipped in B&W photographs that augment the text and they are still bright and clear. One is of Jefferson with William Jennings Bryan, another with Will Rogers and one with Eleanor Roosevelt. Well done local history of a prominent Christian educator and fighter in the Temperance movement. Very handsome signed First Edition.LOC SSE-04.…